Noir (2001 anime series)

Noir is a 2001 anime TV series.

I’m not going to give any plot details other than those pertaining to the first of the 26 episodes.

It opens with a cute blonde French girl (we later find out that her name is Mireille) in Paris. It looks like the opening for a fluffy romance story. Then the killings begin, and a dozen men are left dead.

Mireille really is a charming, pretty very feminine young lady. The only thing unusual about her is the way she earns her living. She is a hitwoman. A killer for hire. One of the best in the business.

But most of the killings were not done by Mireille. They were done by Kirika Yumura, a young very cute Japanese girl. Kirika knows nothing about herself. She doesn’t think Kirika Yumura is her real name. She has no idea how she came to know so much about guns, or became so good at killing.

It’s all a bit perplexing to Mireille. It’s obvious that some very determined very dangerous people are out to kill her. Teaming up with Kirika seems not only logical but necessary. After that she will have to kill Kirika. Mireille has survived in this business by never leaving loose ends behind, or living witnesses. She likes Kirika, but she will still have to kill her. She does think that it is only fair to let Kirika know about her intentions.

Mireille and Kirika work well together as a team but it’s increasingly clear that they have mysterious and powerful enemies out to get them. It may have something to do with Kirika’s past.

Maybe the Soldats have the answers, but the two girls know nothing about the Soldats other than the fact they exist.

This is not a straightforward Chicks With Guns crime story. There is as much cool Chicks With Guns action as you could possibly desire but there’s something deeper going on. That something deeper may have a rational explanation but in the world of anime you can never be sure. You can never be sure that you’re dealing with a single level of reality, or any level of reality at all. Early on the viewer has no idea what the central narrative will tun out to be.

Deadly lady assassins were nothing new in 2001 but Noir is a long way from the world of movies like La Femme Nikita.

The relationship between the two women is complex. They do not appear to be lovers but there’s an emotional bond, possibly a sisterly bond. These are two women who are both, for different reasons, cut off from all normal social interactions. It is highly likely that Mireille has never had a normal friendship with another woman. She believes herself to be totally self-reliant. She has never needed anybody. She knows that the sensible thing to do is simply to kill Kirika. Kirika is a threat. Kirika knows much too much about her and about her line of work.

But although Mireille thinks a lot about killing Kirika she seems unable to do so. She rationalises this. She needs to know Kirika’s secret. She does not want to admit that her reasons for not killing the girl might be emotional.

There is such a tangled web of female emotional relationships in this series. Female friendships, female loyalties and betrayals, female jealousies. And they’re all complex and ambiguous relationships. Mireille appears to develop some kind of maternal feeling toward Kirika. Or perhaps it’s a big sister-little sister thing. Mireille’s feelings towards Kirika evolve. Perhaps they are growing closer, or perhaps they are growing apart. Perhaps they are learning to trust each other, or perhaps in other ways Mireille is learning to trust Kirika less.

What’s nice is the “show, don’t tell” approach taken. Mireille never tells us how she feels about Kirika. We figure it out from her actions and from gestures and looks.

It is very important not to jump to conclusions when viewing this series, and not to interpret it in the light of 2020s ideological obsessions. Mireille and Kirika are not lesbians. The Japanese have fewer hangups about sex than Americans and this is very much an anime for grown-ups. Had the writers wanted to suggest that there was a lesbian component to the relationship they would certainly have done so. But they don’t. This is a series with philosophical, religious, moral and spiritual agendas. It is not about sexual identities or gender identities.

It is fairly obvious that Kirika and Mireille are both virgins. This seems to be part and parcel of their calling. For these two women killing is not a job, it really is a calling. It requires single-mindedness. There is no room for sexual involvements. As the series progresses it becomes more and more obvious that they really are in fact virgins. They are not like other women. They are more like virgin priestesses of death. We also might suspect that for these girls killing is a substitute for sex. As long as there’s killing to be done who needs sex?

We have to remember that these women are killers. It’s no good trying to tell ourselves that Mireille is really a nice girl and she only kills bad people. She’s a ruthless paid killer. She’ll kill anyone she’s paid to kill.

Early on you might assume this will be a Chicks With Guns crime thriller, or maybe spy thriller, a bit along the lines of La Femme Nikita. But as the series unfolds we discover that it’s something very very different. It’s a totally different sort of movie.

About three-quarters of the way through we get a huge plot twist. Followed by an even bigger twist. Followed in quick succession by two more. Everything we thought we knew will have to be rethought. It’s not just plot twists. At various stages we have to rethink our assumptions about key characters, and key character relationships. It’s not that we’ve been misled or that the characterisations are inconsistent - it’s more that we keep on discovering new layers. The picture we had in our mind wasn’t wrong because we were being lied to but because that picture was so very incomplete.

Kirika and Mireille do not understand themselves. Kirika doesn’t know how she came to be such an efficient killing machine, and she doesn’t know why she doesn’t feel sad when she kills people. Mireille’s memories of her own past are incomplete and are false in the sense that she was too young to understands what was happening. Kirika and Mireille will learn a lot about themselves. Some of it they won’t like.

This is the kind of series that makes me love anime TV series so much. It’s not afraid to confound expectations. Very highly recommended.